The United States military should learn the same lesson, and in many cases it is. After a long, proud history of fighting wars near and far, every advance in size and might has brought a commensurate contribution to soaring energy use.
So we have the Abrams tank, the world's most formidable armored vehicle, which gets a whopping half a mile per gallon.
And we have logistical operations in the wilderness of the Iraqi desert that would have made Napoleon blush: Car dealerships in a country where refined oil is imported despite the world's third-largest oil reserves; movie theaters where most public gathering places are bombing targets; and Olympic-size swimming pools where dearth of water has been a casus belli for thousands of years (some of these luxuries were established by Saddam, but they are willfully maintained by his usurpers).
The military gets whatever energy it needs to power its might. Often this is for good cause, but the displacement of resources away from domestic production stings the economy harder than most imagine.
This disproportionate use (proportion being fuel per civilian compared to fuel per soldier) is pointed out by Carlton Meyer, of the website G2 Military:
"The US Army burned 12 times more fuel per soldier in Iraq than it did in France in 1944 -- nine gallons of fuel per soldier per day in 2004."
By our own reckoning, if the Department of Defense were a country, its fossil fuel use would stand equal to that of Greece - about #31 in the world at 400,000 barrels a day.
The U.S. Army calculated that it would need to use 40 million gallons of fuel in just three weeks of combat in Iraq.
This amount is equivalent to all of the gasoline consumed by all Allied armies combined during the four years of World War I!
And the tanker truck drivers transporting this fuel - of course at huge personal risk and with a great deal of skill - are making upwards of $100,000 yearly as subcontractors to mega-contractors like Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown & Root.
The stress that these field operations place on the military budget is being quietly noticed, and the easiest way to relieve some of the back-end pressure is by establishing more sustainable fuel consumption practices at domestic bases.
Solar Sit-ups
Two Air Force bases - Dyess in Texas and Fairchild in Washington - are 100% renewable-powered in their ground facilities like mess halls. But that leaves much to be operated on Cold War consumption standards that paid little mind to what were then single-digit oil prices.
To bastardize a Marxian phrase, the history of all society is the history of resource struggles. Whether gold or spices, coal or oil, the stuff of fortune determines peace to a far greater extent than whatever democratic compromises or surrenders can be negotiated.
So it follows that the history of those very struggles must come back to the loot they seek to exploit. This has never been truer than in the Industrial Era, where fossil fuels not only power the wanderlust but the warships as well.
After all, John Cabot was after trade items, but his ships were powered by wind. Our soldiers aim to garrison the world's energy supply to the benefit of our lasting wealth, and their frigates and carriers run on the very essence they seek to safeguard.
These expenditures have definite, if underappreciated, effects at home: in his book Petrodollar Warfare, William R. Clark explains that the true price of gasoline to American consumers must include overseas adventures to make sure the hydrocarbons keep flowing:
"In 1998 the International Center for Technology Assessment computed that Americans indirectly pay a minimum of $5.60 per gallon, and potentially much higher based on
current tax subsidies to US energy companies, defense department expenses, environmental costs, and other externalities."
If this was the conclusion in 1998, when gasoline was under a buck a gallon and a wobbly peace persisted in the world's oil-producing regions, what are we really paying now, and what does the future hold?
All indicators point to the government's recognition, along with the Department of Defense, that this pressure will not ease. They are making preparations for Peak Oil, and so should you.
- Sam Hopkins
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